What makes Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’ the polar opposite of ‘Rumours’?
Every artist who has been in the game for a while usually has records they can hold up to as theory gold standards. As much as people might like to criticise the amount of horrible material that someone has released, these are the records that stop the rain for a little bit and have people admit that they had something special after all. Very rarely do you have a record that is the complete opposite of the classic, though, and in the case of Fleetwood Mac, they managed to make the anti-Rumours the minute they began working on Tusk.
But that doesn’t mean that they suddenly forgot how to make radio gold or anything like that. The music on Tusk is still some of the most adventurous pieces they would ever make, but judging it next to the solid-gold slab of vinyl that came before, it feels like it takes deliberate steps to move in the other direction.
Before looking at Tusk, what exactly made Rumours so good back in the day? Yes, there was the drama that was eating away at the band that most people couldn’t take their eyes off of, but it didn’t matter so long as they were still making songs that were aces from back to front. It couldn’t have been easy writing and singing songs like ‘Second Hand News’ or ‘Dreams’, but that didn’t matter to the public when it became their license to print money.
Then again, let’s look at the position the band were in. They had gone through the biggest emotional experience that each of them had gone through, and despite making a classic, they were left drained from the entire experience. Would you want to put yourself through that same rollercoaster ride again?
So, really, Tusk feels less like an album and more of a visceral reaction to their fame. Since Lindsey Buckingham had already become a perfectionist on Rumours, this is where the genius starts turning into a mad scientist, like the songs that he wrote to blend their classic sound with genres like new wave.
Given how dialled in Buckingham was on this new direction, it’s also insane to see that the rest of the band weren’t interested in it at all. When the album isn’t going through its zany moments, Stevie Nicks’s songs like ‘Storms’ and ‘Sara’ feel like the more adult versions of songs that ended up on Rumours, while Christine McVie’s material is as poppy and catchy as ever.
Even though the album is crazy messy, there are pieces of it that are still just as brilliant. Along with the colour palette of the cover, this is the closest that the group came to making their version of The Beatles’ White Album, where every band member is shoehorned into their own corner and forced to make their version of the album right next to each other.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it really is the anti-Rumours equation. Whereas their masterpiece had a certain warmth to it, a lot of the tonal shifts on this album feel like a splash of cold water by comparison, especially when you’re jamming along to a tune like ‘Not That Funny’ and then calm back down to play ‘Sisters of the Moon’.
More importantly, there’s just not as much cohesion on the record as Rumours. Regardless of the problems within the band, their magnum opus did have a certain way of playing off each other. None of that can be said here, especially when they refuse to compromise their sound and just stack songs on top of each other.
Then again, that doesn’t make it bad; it’s just a different kind of brilliant. Many people can pick out exact themes running throughout Rumours, but Tusk is an example of making an anti-concept album, where each song exists totally on its own and never once tries to compromise for its sound. So when listening to it, remember this isn’t a diary like the first classic. It was more about making the next step, and even if there were a few rough edges, it’s still far from bad.
